Two plays for dancers

Автор

William Butler Yeats

Год написания книги

2017

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FIGURE of CUCHULAIN

I have come
From Mananan's court upon a bridleless horse.

EMER

What one among the Sidhe has dared to lie
Upon Cuchulain's bed and take his image?

FIGURE of CUCHULAIN

I am named Bricriu – not the man – that Bricriu,
Maker of discord among gods and men,
Called Bricriu of the Sidhe.

EMER

Come for what purpose?

FIGURE of CUCHULAIN

(sitting up and showing its distorted face. Eithne Inguba goes out)

I show my face and everything he loves
Must fly away.

EMER

You people of the wind
Are full of lying speech and mockery.
I have not fled your face.

FIGURE of CUCHULAIN

You are not loved.

EMER

And therefore have no dread to meet your eyes
And to demand him of you.

FIGURE of CUCHULAIN

For that I have come.
You have but to pay the price and he is free.

EMER

Do the Sidhe bargain?

FIGURE of CUCHULAIN

When they set free a captive
They take in ransom a less valued thing.
The fisher when some knowledgeable man
Restores to him his wife, or son, or daughter,
Knows he must lose a boat or net, or it may be
The cow that gives his children milk; and some
Have offered their own lives. I do not ask
Your life, or any valuable thing;
You spoke but now of the mere chance that some day
You'd sit together by the hearth again;
Renounce that chance, that miserable hour,
And he shall live again.

EMER

I do not question
But you have brought ill luck on all he loves
And now, because I am thrown beyond your power
Unless your words are lies, you come to bargain.

FIGURE of CUCHULAIN

You loved your power when but newly married
And I love mine although I am old and withered;
You have but to put yourself into that power
And he shall live again.

EMER

No, never, never.

FIGURE of CUCHULAIN

You dare not be accursed yet he has dared.

EMER

I have but two joyous thoughts, two things I prize,
A hope, a memory, and now you claim that hope.

FIGURE of CUCHULAIN

He'll never sit beside you at the hearth
Or make old bones, but die of wounds and toil
On some far shore or mountain, a strange woman
Beside his mattress.